- Vittorio Sgarbi

ENGLISH

"The city of Trieste is in pop art revival. At the end of World War II, from America to Europe, there was a new world of consumerism made ​​of things that we may consider as superfluous, but became a necessary and predominant vehicle for advertising.In Italy, with television still in black and white, this phenomenon occurred in “carousels,“ with the first commercial advertisements that told, in very short spots, a successful story. We have experienced the visions of Italian Oliviero Toscani, whose controversy provoked a path of creativity. We have posters of the garments of great designers such as Armani and Cavalli. These represent the culmination of a history that began in the 1950s, when TV was still in black and white. Pop Art came to Venice as the city’s testimony to the art of realism, in 1958, with Andy Warhol and Rauschenberg.We can say that the sixties were the years of not the extravagance that is called Pop Art, but a realization that the face of the city was changing -- through a series of huge billboards in spaces between buildings, in city squares and entrances, and along roads. The billboard of artist Mimmo Rotella are film posters where you see paintings, such as comics or the film adaptation of a novel (cineromanzi), and the faces of the great heroes of American films including, especially, Marilyn Monroe. And so the great stories of film, television, advertising is invoked: In those years, Marilyn Monroe, Kennedy, Mao Tze Tung, Coca Cola, and one by one they are taken by an absolute genius named Andy Warhol who is not an artist who paints the things that express soul or sensitivity, but images taken from the street or from the poster of a film.Marilyn Monroe takes on a gravure, and that image by which we don’t even know the photographer, is taken by Andy Warhol and brought into a museum. Then communications, advertising, newspapers, film, and television, offer material. In Italy, for example, Mario Schifano worked in this sense. He was in front of a television set, made ​Polaroids, then retouched quickly, using them as sketches. He then took the polaroid film, and it was printed on a primed canvas, and he painted on that canvas. So in reality, his world of inspiration were images were shown on TV. Here, all this iconosphere , which dates from 1958, more than 50 years ago, is Pop Art. It’s about walking in a city and no longer seeing only numbered buildings but seeing a billboard, a neon sign of a shop, a number of elements that contaminate the city. They are part of the city where we live; elements that you cannot even imagine to remove. Perhaps they are controlled spaces, simply overlap, or are posters illegally hung, perhaps in election campaigns or posted by someone who wants to publish something illicitly, even illegally.Well if this is the basis, we must take into account that, essentially, Pop Art is a realist art form. But not the reality of neo-realism like the poor “Shoeshine,” the 1946 film directed by Vittorio De Sica that is considered one of the masterpieces of Italian neorealism, about bike thieves of an Italy that is poor and of an America that has reached full development after the liberation of Europe. That is the period of realism in black and white: neorealism. When there is a large industrial capitalist economic recovery begins a new world in Italy, which is characterized by an economic boom and the destruction of many areas of the city and wildly transformed the face of the suburbs. It's clear that an artist in America or Italy sees the face of the city that way and thinks that his task is to show that reality, and so do all the great artists: Claes Oldenburg and Robert Rauschenberg, and Andy Warhol in particular.Warhol’s Factory was the studio workshop environment through which moved a younger Steve Kaufman, who then lived about fifty years. The story of Pop Art is not Pop Art live. It is a reflection of what the artists within this 30-year time period had identified as the art of the city. From this type of model emerges another, which is a newer art form that touches upon these writers of the last 80-90 years.These works, instead of representing the art with the reproduction of what the cities have, becomes the change. In the suburbs, often degraded or miserable, or miserable due to the ugliness of the concrete buildings, the artist directly depict something that is stolen because no one asked him nor authorized him. This also makes it a quite heroic action of the writer, who seems today exceeded.Look at the works of Steve Kaufman, an artist who died too soon, and whose reflection in history gave us a new Pop Art – Neo Pop Art – an initiative we see that references master Andy Warhol and the Marilyn Monroe legacy.Portraying Coca-Cola was one of the great ideas of Andy Warhol: an advertisement for Coca Cola, which is not a necessary point, but to simply advertise with Coca Cola. We all know Andy Warhol, because he managed to pervert the meaning of communication, by taking something that has been advertised and is advertised again through art. The same is true for the image of Marilyn Monroe that holds as a deity of our time. Time wears those images. Steve Kaufman is important because he appears to reinvent the stories at risk. Who knows if Marilyn Monroe is in danger of being forgotten? Marilyn Monroe was already dead when he was a child, and does not continue in reality, but by the work of Andy Warhol.Steve Kaufman’s method of operation was to relate contemporary works as if they had a recent documented history. The picture that tells another story, in Milan, is the recent revival of a figure of a certain age, but not yet forgotten, since we have Amanda Lear who was in relationship with Salvador Dali. I believe what remains of Salvador Dali in everyone’s memory, I really think, but certainly in the years when he was alive -- was the point of mediation between the avant-garde of the futurists, Marinetti, a big personality, and Picasso himself, and Andy Warhol. He and Giorgio De Chirico were the prophets of art that needs to be communication; which needs a character that can be recognized by a mustache, for extravagant behavior, to be gruff. Why not picture the artists of Pop Art? Because it makes his life a work of art. So the tribute, in this case, is to Andy Warhol, where you see the face with the blonde wig under "the match" place on the long wall… and also Salvador Dali, who was one of the founders of this new idea of an art linked to popularity, reputation, bizarre behavior, the provocative, and extravagant. But of course, for most of the characters from the 60’s onwards there is the problem of becoming characters. It is important that the creator become a witness of his art. So it was De Chirico.In the case of Steve Kaufman and Andy Warhol, Pop Art becomes a form of popular communication. Otherwise we would not understand a work of art such as "Marilyn," which brings together three collective stories: the dollar, Coca Cola, and Hollywood with Marilyn Monroe. Why do something like this? These things will live by themselves. These things serve to become a painting, a work of art. So in this world you can say even more that the painter is the historian. The critic who reflects on this world is Kaufman, whose talent enters both creativity and reflection on what’s already created.So Pop Art tests what is old and what endures. I believe that in the minds of Steve Kaufman and Andy Warhol, coming from the American world, where Coca Cola and Leonardo are equal -- they have the same weight. Indeed, perhaps Coca Cola has a bit of extra weight, because it may be that there is someone who knows Coca Cola, but has some doubts on Leonardo. And this is proof of the power of image that these icons of our time possess. So here it is, as if we saw an exhibition of paintings of the Renaissance, except that, instead of being separated by 400 years, these are distanced 10-20-30 years. As long as you have a set time, you look at these images as capsules. That which holds most of all are the Rolex, another story of our time, and perhaps Coca Cola, that I think that over time will have more hold because it is a consumer product.And what Steve Kaufman records is like a catalog; a record of the stories existing in his time. It is certainly interesting that he them forth with a spirit that is not a direct reflection, as he does not look at this reality, but looks at the reproduction of the reproduction. If you happen to see how Andy Warhol looked at reproduction, Kaufman looks at the reproduction of Warhol. So it is a highly mediated process, in which the artist feels that his world is this and cannot escape. It is the world in which he lived, and died in 2010 at 50 years, and we continue to see it with him. He is alive with us as long as the stories are alive that he represented. I think this is the meaning of Steve Kaufman. He works on this material that is all of our time and what becomes, then, at the point of the story. An artist like Kaufman understands it to the point that he captures it. That is, reproducing the reproduced with one thing that has never been seen. Here, I think is the meaning of this exhibition. The paintings are very festive, very colorful, very fun, but the result of a kind of great nostalgia of an ancient world already lost, although so close because he was born when Marilyn Monroe is dying. He is 4 years old when she died, but she becomes the protagonist of his paintings. This thing is drawing very close in scale to an established history as if it were the Mona Lisa. Here, I think this is the strength of Steve Kaufman, of life and the body of these stories, the physical reality not necessary. You only need the image that we carry inside us, that is imposed and shall be determined by advertising, and is determined by the repetition that makes some of these faces, familiar faces, and many of these products, inevitable."

- Vittorio Sgarbi

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